


Only Ever

by Recycling



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Everyone lives, F/F, Reunion, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Scream, one flesh one end really just means I love you you dumb idiot huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26765230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recycling/pseuds/Recycling
Summary: It's time for Harrow to wake up, even if she isn't quite sold on the idea yet.  But at least there's a reunion in her near future.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94





	Only Ever

“It’s time to go.” The voice was low and dangerously soft. Harrow knew exactly who it belonged to, so she did not dare to open her eyes. Instead, she curled herself around the longsword she shared a coffin with, like a child clinging on to a beloved toy.

“It’s time to go.” The Body repeated the statement, this time stepping closer to the coffin where Harrow lay.

“No.” Harrow refused to look, refused to face the demands made of her.

“It’s time to go.” And without ceremony, The Body reached down, grabbed Harrowhark unceremoniously by her robes, and pulled her out of the coffin.  
“No!” Harrow yelled and twisted in The Body’s grip, “No I can’t go back yet!” 

“It’s time to go,” The Body repeated, and dragged Harrowhark by the scruff of her robes across the dread ground of The Tomb. She desperately pried at the fingers gripping her clothes, but they remained as hard as steel. 

“She’s still there, I can’t go back, it will…” And her screams were cut off as they plunged into the saltwater and it filled up her mouth, drowning her yet again.

~

Harrow came back to her own body in a horrible, startling gasp, sitting bolt upright on whatever cot she had been placed and taking awful, physical breaths in her corporeal lungs once again. 

“No,” her voice came out in half sobs as she ran her hands over her body, taking stock, “No no no no no.”

She grasped her left thumb in her right hand and jerked it back until it popped, screaming as the tendon immediately knit itself back together and righted the joint. _Still a lyctor, so Gideon was…_  
The Body stood next to her, maddeningly placid as she observed Harrow with an infuriating indifference.

“ _You_ ,” Harrow vaulted to stand with an energy she did not know she possessed, “How dare you? How dare you bring me back? Do you know what you’ve done?” 

“I have restored you to your proper vessel. Most would be grateful.” The Body said in the voice of nightmares.

“You have ruined _everything_.” And Harrow launched herself at The Body, the force knocking the abomination against the wall, clawing murderously at the woman. 

Without even consciously thinking about it, Harrow elongated and sharpened her radius and ulna, shoving the bone spikes into the soft flesh under The Body’s chin.

“Where is she?” Harrow hissed, “What have you done with her?” 

“Ninth! Stop!” Came a voice from behind her, and Camilla Hect made an attempt to grab Harrow’s arms and pull her off. Harrow threw her off with a strength her frame should not have possessed, her focus singular. 

“We did what had to be done.” The Body remained serene and Harrow pushed her bone shards with so much force it would have entered the flesh and protruded from the mouth of a normal person. The Body did not even have the decency to bleed, the monstrous flesh barely gave. 

“What have you done with the soul of Gideon Nav?” Harrow sobbed out the last two words, “Where is she?” 

Silence, and Harrow’s heart fractured in her chest. The Body regarded her serenely.

“Careful, Nonagesimus,” came a different voice from behind her, “Or people might start to think you actually like me.” 

Harrow turned towards the voice, and beheld, in the doorway, standing with her arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the doorframe, possessing eyes that were not her own, a very much alive and very self-satisfied Gideon.

“Gideon.” Harrow was in front of her in two steps, reaching out blindly at her cavalier as if touch could confirm what eyes and ears could not. Her excess bone dropping away as her body healed itself without conscious thought.

“You’re…” Harrow started but could not find words. 

“Told you I’d see you on the flip side,” Gideon’s voice was softer than it had any right to be, and her smile only grew at Harrow’s consternation. 

And then, Harrowhark Nonagesimus did one of the things Harrowhark Nonagesimus did best, and fainted.

~

She came to in the same room, back on the cot she had originally woken up on. The Body and Hect were notably absent, with the only other person in the room sitting on a chair next to her. Noticing Harrow’s movement, Gideon shifted closer, obvious concern on her face.

“That was quite a display back there.”

Harrow sat up.

“Yes, well, it was a shocking transition, which is wildly inconvenient given the circumstances. But..” she reached out again, hands reaching up to run over Gideon’s face, neck, down her shoulders, like she might disappear if Harrow stopped touching her. Like she wasn’t quite corporeal yet. Gideon closed her eyes at the contact and inhaled sharply. Harrow’s hand settled on Gideon’s chest, where a gaping hole had existed the last time she saw her cavalier, “You’re healed? Fully?” 

Gideon sat back and smirked. “Are you asking to see my tits, Nonagesimus?” 

“Well at least I know it’s really you,” Harrow huffed and settled herself back to sit on the cot, removing her hands to cross against her own chest, “How did all this happen?” 

“Getting back into our bodies? Well, since you so conveniently decided to take a vacation from the pilot seat, I had to keep your stupidly weak body alive. I did tell you to do pushups and you fully ignored me, for some reason.” Harrow rolled her eyes here. “We got picked up by Hect and some Eden or something group, along with your girlfriend, which by the way, fine way to treat her after she brings you back to life…”

“She is not my girlfriend.” 

“Oh please, I remember how you talked to her on the Mithraeum.” Her voice hitched. “But anyway, apparently, they’d been keeping my body around on ice and abracadabra we’re back, baby.”

“While I’m sure that’s an oversimplification, it would have been easier if I’d been told that before being dragged back. But at least we’re here now.”

Harrow moved to slide off the bed, but was stopped as Gideon shifted closer, brows knit. The cavalier’s voice dropped, “Why’d you do it, Harrow?”

“Well I was prepared to come back, but then Septimus suggested you might be here,” Harrow gestured broadly to her own body, “and coming back at that point would have destroyed everything I’d…”

“No! I mean, why’d you do it in the first place? Also, wait, what, Septimus?”

Harrow worried her temple with her thumb, “When I was… absent… I found myself in The River with some of the deceased from Canaan House. Septimus, the actual Septimus, not Cytherea, suggested that you were, as you so eloquently put it, in the pilot seat, and that leaving you there was more conducive to the work than me coming back would be.” She paused, “Also, Jeannemary says hello.” 

Gideon sat back, grief evident on her face, “Poor kid. Was she mad?” 

“No. I mean, I don’t think so, I got the message through Pent.” 

“Well, while you were vacationing with all of our dead friends, I was keeping us alive out here. No easy task! We lost multiple thumbs! But you didn’t answer my question, Harrow, why’d you do it? I died for you Harrow, and you didn’t even want me.” Gideon’s voice cracked as she finished her query.

Harrow’s heart ached at her cavalier’s words and broke at the look of utter betrayal on her face. 

“Reject you? Griddle,” Harrow’s voice sounded high strung, and it grated against her own ears, “It was never about rejecting you, it was about saving you. If I hadn’t, if I had gone ahead with the lyctor process, I would have consumed you.” She was getting hysterical, “You would have been gone, forever. If I was a better necromancer, I could have worked something out sooner and actually saved you. But I’m not, so I did what I had to do.”

She hated the look on Gideon’s face, half hurt, and half something else she could not name. 

“Harrow, it was my job to protect you, and you wouldn’t let me…”

“Oh shut up Nav,” Harrow drew herself to stand on the cot, probably the only time she had ever been taller Gideon in her life, “None of that mattered, not without you. I meant what I said, I am _undone_ , without you. The amount of times you have almost died, the amount of times you have died is both terrifying and wildly inconvenient to me. I know you did what you thought you had to do back at Canaan House, but…”

She was interrupted by Gideon taking her hands, a contact she did not expect, and saying in such a broken voice, “Harrow. You don’t have to say this, I’d do anything you needed, anything at all. I’m your sword, Harrowhark, and you know that.” Gideon’s breath shook as she spoke. 

Electrified at the contact between the two of them, Harrow bent her head down until their foreheads almost touched. 

“Preserving your life has to be the primary objective of mine,” Harrow closed her eyes and swallowed hard, “I tried being without you for three days. I couldn’t do it.”

“Harrow, you can’t mean that, you can’t…”

Harrow, tired of arguing when Gideon was right there in front of her, after so long apart, after what felt like ages of empty distance, reached down to grab her cavalier’s face. Taking stock of Gideon’s expression, her lips slightly parted and breath uneven, Harrow cursed herself for wasted time. She had thrown so much away, and now was the time to make her choice. She refused to keep making the same mistake. Screwing up her courage, Harrow leaned down and matched her lips up to her cavalier's. 

Gideon froze as they met, and for a second Harrow thought she had made a terrible mistake, misread everything and ruined it all, again. But then Gideon was moving against her mouth, and Gideon's hands were on back, pulling her off of the cot and into an embrace as the cavalier rose to stand. Their bodies melded as Gideon met her challenge, every possible point of contact made between them. Harrow snaked an arm around Gideon’s waist and another over her shoulders, almost clawing for closer contact. She could feel Gideon's muscles flex as they pulled at each other. This was _right_. The cavalier’s hands cradled her necromancer’s head as they broke apart, still breathing each other’s air.

“Harrow, what about…” but she never got to finish her sentence.

“Griddle, you must know,” Harrow’s thumbs moved to gently circled Gideon’s cheekbones as she anticipated what her cavalier had been about to say, “You must know it’s you. It’s only ever been you.” 

Gideon closed her eyes and took a deep, unsteady breath, “One flesh, one end, huh?”

“One flesh, one end,” Harrow agreed, and leaned up to kiss her blessedly alive cavalier again.

**Author's Note:**

> Is everyone in this fandom writing fluffy reunion fics? _Yep!_ Am I also going to write a fluffy reunion fic? _Yop!_ And I know these repressed idiots will probably take like, 500 pages to even start talking about their feelings, but I've gotta find a way to cope until AtN is out. Written for the People's Tomb Discord fic jam week three, prompt: scream (even if I stretched the prompt a bit) Thanks for reading!


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